Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.

- Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.

Lippmann, Walter

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.

Martineau, Harriet

If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers.

Halifax, Edward F.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

Johnson, Samuel

Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.

Beecher, Henry Ward

Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked.

Sprecht, Robert D.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

Law school taught me one thing; how to take two situations that are exactly the same and show how they are different.

Pomerantz, Hart

10.

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principles of fear or reason, but from passion.

Montesquieu, Charles De

11.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

12.

In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

13.

Laws are not masters, but servants, and he rules them, who obeys them.

Becker, Ward

14.

A jury too often has at least one member more ready to hang the panel than to hang the traitor.

Lincoln, Abraham

15.

Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. Good for society, our laws are very bad for the individuals whereof it is composed; for, if they one time protect the individual, they hinder, trouble, fetter him for three quarters of his life.

Sade, Marquis De

16.

The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

Maxwell, James Clerk

17.

In cross examination, as in fishing, nothing is more ungainly than a fisherman pulled into the water by his catch.

Nizer, Louis

18.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

19.

Laws are felt only when the individual comes into conflict with them.

Lafollette, Suzanne

20.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

21.

Fools and obstinate men make lawyers rich.

Proverb

22.

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

Goldman, Emma

23.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

24.

Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.

La Bruyere, Jean De

25.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

26.

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure unchangeable law.

Sutrakritanga

27.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

King Jr. Martin Luther

28.

The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.

Brecht, Bertolt

29.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

Roosevelt, Theodore

30.

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed.

Ostman, Virginia

31.

When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.

Cervantes, Miguel De

32.

Our demands are simple, normal, and therefore they are difficult to satisfy. All we ask is that an actor on the stage live in accordance with natural laws

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

33.

In a democracy -- even if it is a so-called democracy like our white-?litist one -- the greatest veneration one can show the rule of law is to keep a watch on it, and to reserve the right to judge unjust laws and the subversion of the function of the law by the power of the state. That vigilance is the most important proof of respect for the law.

Gordimer, Nadine

34.

A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.

Puzo, Mario

35.

We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

36.

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

Engels, Friedrich

37.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have must to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

Burke, Edmund

38.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

King Jr. Martin Luther

39.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

Gandhi, Mahatma

40.

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.

Diderot, Denis

41.

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

42.

Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.

Sayers, Dorothy L.

43.

The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better. Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.

Havel, Vaclav

44.

The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.

La Bruyere, Jean De

45.

Keep out of Chancery. It's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains.

Dickens, Charles

46.

The first thing we do, lets kill the lawyers. [Henry Iv]

Shakespeare, William

47.

Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.

Sade, Marquis De

48.

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

Crisp, Quentin

49.

The due process of law as we use it, I believe, rests squarely on the liberal idea of conflict and resolution.

Trapp, June L.

50.

We should have learnt by now that laws and court decisions can only point the way. They can establish criteria of right and wrong. And they can provide a basis for rooting out the evils of bigotry and racism. But they cannot wipe away centuries of oppression and injustice -- however much we might desire it.

Humphrey, Hubert H.